


At The Crossroads

by quantumoddity



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alex is a mess, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Hunters, Angst, Crossroads Deals & Demons, Demon Deals, F/M, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2018-10-06 18:27:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10341675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumoddity/pseuds/quantumoddity
Summary: Alex didn’t realise he was crying until he realised the tears were dripping from his nose onto the photograph. He cleaned it off quickly with his sleeve, there couldn’t be any imperfections or smudges, this was delicate spell work. Then he dried his own eyes just as hurriedly, swallowing back the building storm in his chest. He couldn’t afford to feel that right now. If he backed out now, if he hesitated for a moment, then that would be it. It would be the end of both of them.This was his last chance to save his Eliza.Alex and Eliza's attempt to start a new life after giving up hunting has gone disastrously wrong and now her life hangs in the balance and Alex has only one person left to go to.





	1. A Deal

Alex spent a few moments he didn’t really have looking at the photograph in his hands.

Finding the ingredients he needed hadn’t been hard, they hadn’t cleaned out the car since they’d cut and run and a thousand different vials and mason jars were still rolling around in the trunk. The photograph, he got from Eliza’s wallet. That had been the hard part, walking away and taking her coat from where it had just been discarded on the hospital room floor, rifling through the pockets in a way that had felt indecent.

A little like grave robbing.

The photo was of him, of course, it had to be for this to work. But it was one of him that he’d almost forgotten about, faded and rumpled from being carried around.

Eliza had taken it what felt like decades ago, a time of happiness and safety that Alex couldn’t even remember right now. He couldn’t remember ever feeling anything but bone shaking panic and fear. This younger version of himself was grinning crookedly, coyly, trying to duck away from the camera but Eliza had been insistent, declaring that he just looked too cute not to photograph, that she wanted to preserve this moment for the rest of eternity. Alex had snorted and blushed and rolled his eyes, wondering aloud why she really thought the sight of him with shower wet hair needed to be recorded for posterity. But then Eliza had simply pressed this younger, happier version of himself against the bed and kissed him, smothering his protests and complaints with her mouth on his, silencing everything in his brain apart from the one thought of how much he loved this woman.

And Eliza had kept it. She’d taken that photo, that careless, silly moment between the two of them, and she kept it by her all the time like a talisman. Like he was something precious.

Alex didn’t realise he was crying until he realised the tears were dripping from his nose onto the photograph. He cleaned it off quickly with his sleeve, there couldn’t be any imperfections or smudges, this was delicate spell work. Then he dried his own eyes just as hurriedly, swallowing back the building storm in his chest. He couldn’t afford to feel that right now. If he backed out now, if he hesitated for a moment, then that would be it. It would be the end of both of them.

This was his last chance to save his Eliza.

 

A crossroads hadn’t been hard to find, there was one so close Alex could still see the hospital building peering above the tree line as he stood at the epicentre of it. The dusk was gathering around him, the air was becoming heavy and there was just an inescapable sense of running out of time, of something draining away.

There was still blood on his hands, Alex couldn’t help noticing, as he buried the box. There had been blood on his hands many times before, more times than he really wanted to admit, so it wasn’t the sight itself that turned his stomach but knowing where the blood came from. His Eliza’s blood. The dark, rusty stains that dappled his sleeves were a reminder that all of this was real and he wasn’t just living some insane nightmare. And with that sickening reminder came a tide of other memories he just couldn’t face right now.

He shook his head to send the panic flying somewhere else and tried to focus on the task at hand, scraping the dark soil over the old tin containing the spell ingredients and standing back, feeling lightheaded. He stood and waited, shivering a little in his thin t shirt and jeans as night crept up and the temperature dropped, trying to focus on the small details around him so the thick silence couldn’t punch a hole through his defences and expose him. If he squinted and tried to count the leaves on the trees, if he focused on the sickly colour of the wilding flowers by the roadside, if he centred in on the goose bumps of his own skin then he wouldn’t fall apart. His mind wouldn’t stray back to that hospital room. How small and empty Eliza had looked, how bloodless and limp, how their last kiss had tasted of rust…

No. He needed focus. He needed calm. He had a job to do.

There was no gradual slip into darkness, there was no gentle turn of a dimmer switch. Night fell on the quiet, underused roadside like a sheet, like a sudden wash.

And he came with it.

 

“Well, I have to admit, I’m a little surprised…”

The voice was smooth, honeyed, like each note in it was carefully chosen and honed for a specific purpose. It came from behind, Alex span, more rattled than he wanted to admit even though he’d known what was coming.

The demon that called itself Burr was standing in the middle of the road. He didn’t look surprised at being summoned, despite what he said, he looked like he was here at this barren crossroads for no reason other than because he planned it, simply straitening his shirt cuffs. At first glance, he looked like nothing other than a business man, dressed impeccably in a dark suit that looked simple but obviously held a subtle extravagance. Tall, thin, bald, a look of complete disinterest on his smooth, dark face. Unassuming, a man who would rather shake your hand and be done with it, who had probably never raised his voice in his life.

But Alex knew better. And sure enough, as Burr raised his eyes to gaze at him, there was a flash of red in their depths.

Alex knew he was talking to the king of the crossroads.

“You know me. I know you,” Alex stated the obvious, not trusting himself with anything but short, simple facts and even then, his voice cracked and splintered.

“Oh, of course I know who you are, Alexander,” Burr replied smoothly, studying the dishevelled man in front of him, a man clearly grief stricken and clinging to the edge but trying to hide it, “Even if we’ve never had the pleasure of meeting up until now, how could I not know of the infamous hunting duo of Alexander and Elizabeth Hamilton? Every day down there I hear a thousand curses against your names. You both seem to have something against my kind, given how many you’ve personally cast back into the pit.”

Burr started taking lazy, casual steps to close the gap between them. Alex reacted immediately, his body shifting and locking defensively, a hand flying to the silver knife at his belt. Another remnant of their old life found in the trunk of his car.  
Burr merely raised an amused eyebrow and held up his palms in a placating gesture, his voice ever so subtly mocking, “Now, now Alexander. You summoned me, remember? I’m hardly going to attack you out of the blue, not when I’m pins and needles to hear why exactly _you_ of all people came knocking on my door.”

Alex didn’t relax in the slightest and his hand didn’t slip from the handle of the knife. He narrowed his eyes at Burr; even after good few months out of the game his mind began automatically picking out points of attack and defence. As if it would make a difference, should it come to blows between one of the strongest demons in all the kingdoms of hell and an exhausted, broken ex-hunter. As if Alex really cared about his own safety anymore.

“You see,” Burr continued casually, “For years, you and wife make such nuisances out of yourselves only to suddenly disappear one day? With not a whisper nor a rumour of where you’ve got to; I must confess, we were all a little worried about you. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth and all that, fear that you’d quit or managed to find yourselves an easy, painless death when so many down there have _much_ bigger and more elaborate plans…” The flash of red again, and the beginnings of a slick grin as he savoured the threat, “And now here you are, in the flesh, not six months later, dragging me up here to the middle of nowhere. Why would I kill you when there’s questions still to answer?”

Alex’s lip curled, the smug patter of the demon grating on his already raw nerves in an unbearable way. His voice was a growl, “I didn’t summon you for a fucking _chat_ , Burr. I want to make a deal.”

There it was, simple and plain, his words echoing a little in the space. Even Burr couldn’t conceal the flash in his eyes, a sickly mix of excitement and shock and delight. But he covered it quickly under his smooth business man’s façade.

“So, what, no preamble? No baiting? The demons you’ve exorcised tell me you talk their ears off with curses and jabs and recommendations of things they can shove up their asses. I’m a little disappointed, have to say.”

Alex’s hackles rose, “Look, I am not in the mood for this shit, not in the slightest. So, if all you’ve got for me is a fucking cheap wisecrack, then I’ll go to someone else.”

Burr was quick to change his stance, of course he was. Alex knew what a deal with a Hamilton was worth to him. Easily as a door to door salesman sliding into another pitch, the demon took a step forward with another mollifying gesture. This time, Alex didn’t back away.

“Hey, it’s no skin off my back, none at all,” Burr drawled, appearing to relax while not actually relaxing at all, “I understand the, ah…time constraint you’re under. Because of course you could walk away, you could go and find another demon to make a pact with but it won’t keep your wife’s corpse any fresher, will it?”

Alex winced. His knees nearly buckled, as if Burr’s words had been a physical punch to his gut.

Because of course he knew. He’d known from the moment he saw Alex, standing at a crossroads just a stone’s throw from a hospital, covered in blood and looking stricken and desperate. Of course, there was only one explanation.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” Burr’s smile was all teeth, “Your lovely wife died and you want me to bring her back. For a small fee, of course, though by the state of you, I’d guess you’d be willing to give anything- “

“She’s not dead!” Alex’s voice was raw, almost a sob, almost a shout and his chest burned with shame as it wrenched from him. He slumped a little under the demon’s relishing gaze, almost pleading now, “Eliza isn’t dead…she’s not dead, I still have time…”

“Not a large amount, I daresay,” Burr corrected smugly, “Hence why I’m your last shot.”

“Fuck off,” Alex spat, his eyes flaring as he gathered himself a little, “Can you help me or not?”

Burr stood a little straighter, “That’s what I do, dear boy. A simple soul for soul trade, is it, ten years until collection, an almost Shakespearian act of love and devotion, bravo and all that, so noble…”

Alex swallowed painfully, cutting across the demon’s bluster before he lost the nerve, “It…it’s not just Eliza.”

Burr stopped, looking at the broken man in front of him with a curious expression, “Oh? People don’t usually haggle with me, what else could you possibly want? What’s worth as much to you as your soulmate, alive and well again?”

Alex had to choke up the next words, “My child. Our child.”

 

It had all happened so fast. All Alex had had were scraps and scenes he couldn’t put together, like a movie he half remembered seeing rather than memories of his own life. Eliza screaming his name, pulling him away from unpacking that last box of books, she’d been asking him to do it for a week. Running to the bathroom and her standing there, ashen, bracing against the doorframe. A brief, dream like moment of joy- it was happening, it was time! -that only made it worse when the floor fell away and he realised that it wasn’t water soaking her jeans, it was blood.

The way she clung to his hand and whimpered in pain, murmuring his name over and over like she was begging him to fix this and make it better. But all he’d been able to do was hold her as her moans had become screams, as doctors and nurses around them traded cruel, metallic sounding words like haemorrhage and breech. He remembered how hollow and pathetic his words had sounded as he’d held her hand and promised that just one more, it’s going to be okay, just one more push, please Betsey, you can do this, you’re doing great. They’d sounded like lies, even to him.

He remembered the rush and the awful silence, thinking they’re supposed to cry. Aren’t they supposed to cry? Alex had got to hold him briefly, just enough time to think that his son was the single most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life before he was taken away. Calls for an incubator, the ICU, blood transfusions, last ditch scrabbling for hope.

And Eliza, her beautiful dark eyes bloodshot and hazy with agony, had pulled him close, kissed him weakly, murmured that she loved him and went limp in his arms.

And that had been it.

Yesterday Alex had had everything. Now he had nothing but this last, desperate hope.

 

Burr didn’t even try to hide his mirth at the situation, after a moment of shock the demon actually chuckled, as if Alex had told him an amusing dinner party anecdote.

“Oh ho! I see!” Burr snickered, his dark eyes shining, “So that’s why you two went off the grid! Didn’t pay enough attention in high school sex ed, hmm? Found yourselves in a bit of a bind and had to cut and run before one of the many monsters you two have pissed off over the years heard that there was going to be a very small, very vulnerable, very _appetising_ bundle of joy? Oh, I’m so sorry, if I’d known the good news I’d have brought cigars!”

“Shut up!” Alex screamed, he’d heard enough, “Shut the fuck up! Another word out of your mouth and I’ll fucking end you, I swear to god!”

His words were harsh, his hand at the knife hilt tightened until the knuckles went white but he couldn’t stop the tears escaping his aching eyes and running down his face. There was just nothing else to do.

Burr quietened his laughter but his eyes stayed amused, very much enjoying the state Alex had worked himself into, “Oh but surely you see the irony in all this, boy? Years and years of hunting, countless close calls and hail Marys and it’s a simple medical complication that’s going to bring down Eliza Hamilton, a piece of rotten luck, an accident…” The demon’s eyes suddenly turned solid black, his smile twisting into something purely malicious, “Well, I mean, some blame has to be laid at your feet, doesn’t it? If you hadn’t knocked the poor girl up, she wouldn’t be dying right now. And after all the times you saved her…all the times _she_ saved _you_ …”

Burr knew he was either about to see Alex break and swing for him or crumble. And he wasn’t disappointed as the fight drained out of the poor guy in an instant and he began to sob bitterly into his hands, the silver knife falling heavily into the dirt.

The demon gave a small sigh of satisfaction. It was always easier to make deals with people who had no fight left in them and it would have been so tedious to have to dirty his new suit ripping Alexander limb from limb, even for the bragging rights of dispatching a Hamilton. But now they could really get down to business. And Burr always preferred to gain a little something more than bragging rights.

 

Alex realised he was crying quickly and choked off, disgusted and embarrassed with himself for losing control. He wiped his face on his arm, clawing back his composure and facing Burr with a flushed face and streaming eyes, “S-So can you help me? Can you save them, Eliza and the baby?”

Burr pursed his lips as if doing calculations in his head, “Well…there’s a bit of an imbalance in our equation, my boy. Dear Eliza and the little bundle of joy means _two_ souls. You can only offer me one and a pretty poor specimen at that.”

Alex’s expression turned fearful, “I need them both. Both or you get nothing from me.”

The demon tilted his head, the moonlight didn’t reflect in his eyes at all, “Is that so…which would you pick, I wonder, if I really pushed you…who is worth more to you, your wife or your newborn?”

“Both. Or. None,” Alex ground through his teeth, forcing back the ache Burr’s words set in his bones, the things he didn’t want to think about.

Burr lifted his eyebrow for a long moment but eventually he let it drop with a sigh. What could he say, a Hamilton’s soul was a terrific prize. And…if he was being truly honest with himself…he pitied Alexander. He couldn’t help but look at the man and think of his own family, his Theodosias, what he would tear apart to keep them safe.

Not that he was going to admit that, of course.

“Fine, fine, you’ve twisted my arm,” he sighed, noting how Alex visibly relaxed in relief, “So the contract is thus. I save your wife and your baby, bring them both to full health like this whole sorry business never happened. And in ten years’ time, Alex, your soul belongs to me. And believe me when I say, I mean to get my money’s worth…do we have a deal?”

Alex knew he should be ashamed of himself, he should feel guilt and revulsion and horror at his own actions. But there was none in him, all he could feel was desperate, painful hope that his family was going to be okay. Ten years. Ten years to be a father and a husband, to build them a life they deserved, that felt like a lifetime. He’d hand himself over right now for ten more minutes with Eliza. Without her, his soul was worthless.

So many times, during Eliza’s pregnancy, he’d pressed his lips to the swell in her belly and promised himself that there was nothing he wasn’t prepared to do to keep his child safe. And god, he’d meant it.

There wasn’t any hesitation as he nodded and said, “We have a deal.”

 

Burr nodded, suddenly all formal, hiding his joy well behind a mask that was all business, “All that’s left is to seal the contract then…”

Alex groaned softly, remembering how demon contracts were signed, but it would hardly be the worst thing he’d do today. He made it on his terms at least, closing the distance between himself and the demon with long strides until he was face to face with the king of the crossroads himself. They were of a height.

Alex leaned in and pressed his lips to Burr’s harshly, with no emotion but desperation. He felt the demon’s hand come up to hold the back of his head, deepening their kiss until some ethereal checkpoint was reached and Burr stepped back, looking bemused. Alex just pulled his lips back from his teeth in a snarl and spat into the dirt.

“A pleasure doing business with you too, Alexander,” Burr chuckled, a slight rumble and echo to his voice now as the image of him blurred, “And congratulations.”

With a snap, the demon was gone and Alex was left alone, trembling with adrenaline and the cold. His head swam, his body begged to just fold and collapse and give up. But there was one thought in his mind that made his eyes snap open and electricity jump through his body.

“Eliza…”

 

Eliza jerked awake with a small, frightened gasp. There was panic at first, that was all she could feel, blind panic as her body ached and hurt in a million different places and she felt so unbalanced, why did her body feel wrong, where was she, why was it so dark, where was Alex, where was…

Her hands flew suddenly to her stomach, looking for the comforting weight she’d gotten used to but finding just an empty hollow. That was when she screamed, trying to sit up, calling for-

“Eliza!” Alex burst through the doors, staggering, nearly collapsing at her bedside, wrapping his arms around her tight as he ever had.  
“Alex?” Eliza’s voice sounded sore, like she hadn’t used it in a while. She clung to her husband, desperately, “Alex, what’s happening, where’s the baby, I can’t remember…”

She began to cry and Alex soothed her, even as he wept himself. He held her face gently between his hands and brushed her tears away as rivers ran down his own sunken cheeks.

“Betsey. Oh god, Betsey, thank _god…_ it’s okay. Everything’s okay, you’re here, you’re okay, the baby’s okay…” it sounded like he was convincing himself as much as her.

“But what happened?” Eliza asked, still fretful, still getting the unshakeable sense that something was very wrong, “I remember…I remember the blood…”

“Shh,” Alex shook his head, running his hands over her, chasing her fear away as he did, “Never mind that now, you did it. You got him here Eliza, you did so well…”

Eliza’s heart shaped face froze suddenly at his words, awe and wonder flooding her eyes, “Him?”

Of course. Of course, it had happened so fast she hadn’t even had a chance to hold her baby, let alone find out the gender. And to be honest, Alex had been shoving it to the back of his mind, it had been easier to distance himself. But now he was here. He was here and his beautiful Eliza was here and their baby was here and nothing was going to take them away ever again.

It was one of the best moments of Alex’s whole life as he got to smile at Eliza, stroke her hair and sigh, “We have a son, Eliza. We’ve got a little baby boy. Philip Hamilton.”

Those words had replaced every scrap of fear in Eliza’s heart, washing her anxiety away with floods of joyful tears. She cried even harder when their little baby was brought through and she got to hold him for the first time and the two parents could sit together and just marvel at the unbelievably beautiful little thing they’d made. For hours, they forgot their exhaustion and lost themselves in saying hello to the baby they’d both sacrificed so much to meet. But they couldn’t deny it forever and once Philip was fed and happy and suitably fussed over, both new parents could think about getting some sleep themselves.

“Doesn’t have my nose,” Alex chuckled eventually, as he bent over their sleeping son after setting him down reluctantly in the bassinet by Eliza’s bed, “Our prayers are answered.”

Eliza laughed too as she gingerly lay down, trying to avoid all her aches and hurts, “Look at his eyes, though. That’s all you. Oh, they’re beautiful…”

“He’s beautiful,” Alex sighed, finally managing to tear himself away from Philip to lay with Eliza on the bed, their desire to cling to each other meaning the single bed worked perfectly fine for the both of them.

There was a lot more kisses and cuddles and happy sighs before Eliza eventually drifted off in the arms of her husband, “I love you, Alex…”

Alex held her close, feeling the grim realisation of what he’d done settle in now his wife and baby were asleep. Now in the dark hospital room, he could hear the wind and see the shadows cast across the floor, like they were reaching for him.

Ten years. It was a lifetime. It was more than he deserved.

No. They weren’t going to reach him here, he wasn’t going to let these thoughts ruin this moment. Not here, not now. He closed his eyes tight…but of course the shadows would still be there when he opened them.

“I love you too, Eliza,” Alex mumbled into her hair, “I love you so much….and I’m so sorry.”


	2. A Confession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex can't hide anything from his wife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took me so long to finally resolve this cliffhanger! I hope it's worth the wait.
> 
> Any comments would be truly amazing and I also have a ko-fi!

Of course some part of Eliza knew. 

She’d spent her entire life surviving on her ability to read people, to see the things they tried to hide from her; so many times she and her sisters, she and her husband, had lived or died based on catching that slight listing of a person’s iris to the right as they lied, the way their fingers (or claws, as the case often was) tightened, the way the slight inconsistencies crept into their story on feet so light, so quiet that only she would catch them. It had always been what she was good at. Angelica was quick and wicked smart, making decisions within seconds that always somehow turned out to be right. Peggy could find her way anywhere with having only glanced once at a map, with her eidetic memory and the compass apparently set in her heart. Alex, after she started hunting with him, he was just a hurricane with a fury inside him that very few things could stand against.

But Eliza, she knew people. And a surprisingly large part of their job, or their duty as she frequently found herself thinking of it for ‘job’ implied that there was a choice in it, it concerned people rather than monsters. And the lines were so often depressingly blurred. 

So there must have always been some spark of realisation, right from the first moment Eliza opened her eyes, wincing at the bright hospital lights and the strangling fear in her chest, from when Alex caught her arms, held her so tightly it hurt them both, clutched her like he was terrified he’d never see her again and sobbed into her shoulder for twenty minutes before telling her...that everything was fine. 

There must have been something but she’d stamped it down so hard she’d forgotten it had ever existed. Why would she chase after it, Eliza had her husband, she had her newborn son, everything she thought she remembered must have been a terrible nightmare. A delirium. It had to be because the alternative was just too horrible to think about; why would she scrabble for horrors when a perfect life, something she’d read about in storybooks as a child and put on par with becoming a princess or owning a unicorn, had come tumbling into her lap? So she’d let whatever flicker of knowledge had come die choked off and gasping for air, she’d let it wither, neglected, until she couldn’t even remember it had taken root. 

But when she’d heard the words come from Alex’s mouth, when she’d felt the bitter, acid sting of them, flinched from their advance, Eliza realised. She realised that she’d always known. 

She knew people and she knew Alex the best of anyone in the world. Of course she did, he was her husband, her partner, the father of her kids, the man she trusted her life, her heart, her soul to and held all of his in return. But she’d never fully known, not until those words sank in, she’d never understood how much damage he could do. 

***

There wasn’t a hunter in the world who didn’t have nightmares. They were as much a part of the job as whetstones, dog eared maps littered with annotations, subsiding on stale chips from ancient vending machines, sleeping fully clothed on top of creaking motel beds. As much as paranoia, loneliness, fear, anger, helplessness. As much as the rusty, sharp smell of blood. 

So it was no surprise to Eliza when she found herself tipping groggily into a dark bedroom, woken suddenly by her husband thrashing and shaking in the bed next to her. No surprise. Just a sinking, grasping feeling of uselessness.

It took her a few moments to realise where she was, hell, who she was, the thick blackness of sleep didn’t seem to want to let her go. Eliza had been so exhausted recently, taking care of their teething youngest, AJ’s tantrum stage, Philip’s quickly swelling teenage gloominess, Angie’s fretfulness. And Alex. For the last week, ever since Christmas ended, he’d been sullen, quiet, in a way her Alex rarely was. His usual, restless energy had dissipated, leaving him with an empty look in his eyes and a hollowness in his cheeks that worried Eliza in a deep, uncomfortable way. 

So she didn’t hesitate in seizing Alex’s shoulders, shaking him a little roughly, desperate to free him of whatever had it’s claws in him. She’d been by his side through everything of what they’d seen as partners, watching his back and being safe in the knowledge that he had her’s. But before they’d started working with each other...she’d had her sisters but her Alex had had no one at all after his mother’s death and he still refused to tell her the absolute worst of what he’d faced in those days, showing her only the raw edges it had all left behind. He’d been a darker person, she knew, he’d hunted recklessly and carelessly, she couldn’t even imagine what horror from his past might be making him writhe and mutter into the pillow feverishly, a sound almost like begging. Now Eliza had to bitterly accept that she couldn’t reach back into the past and protect the haunted, desperately sad young man her husband had been. 

But she could help him now. 

She caught his shoulders, panicking when she saw his own nails digging painfully into his arms, threatening to break the skin, “Alex! Alex, baby, it’s okay, it’s just a dream…” 

Eliza’s voice was heavy and groggy with sleep, Alex heard none of it and just kept on thrashing, getting more and more tangled in the blankets, sweat beading on his pale skin. She still couldn’t make out what he was murmuring, only the unmistakeable terror in it, the pleading, the begging in his voice. It was as if she could hear his heartbeat from here, as if it and her own actually were as tangled together as it had always seemed; as his rattled and jarred in his ribs, her’s picked up too until they were tasting the same copper tang of fear, the same sensation of being chased and hunted and knowing their time before whatever was behind them finally caught and tore them-

“ _ Alexander!”  _

They both gave twin ragged gasps of relief as his dark eyes finally snapped open, his tight, wiry frame stilling suddenly like a puppet with his strings suddenly severed, left limp and exhausted against the rucked up pillows. 

Eliza ran her hand up and down his arm soothingly, “Baby, you’re alright, it was just a bad dream. You’re safe now, I promise.” 

She held her breath and waited for what had always happened before. Alex would look at her, the panic would drain out of his face, he’d reach his arms out for her, she’d pull him close as two people could possibly be, rock him, feel maybe a few tears dampen her shoulder but she’d say nothing but tireless assurances that he was safe. Everything was okay. He was safe. They were both safe. 

Eliza waited but it didn’t happen. 

Alex sat up a little, dragging a palm across his damp forehead. His eyes stayed resolutely shadowed, his shoulders painfully tense. He didn’t move an inch closer to his wife. 

“Alex?” Eliza murmured, her heart sinking. 

“It...I’m okay,” Alex grunted, his voice thick, “Just a bad dream, yeah.” 

Eliza bit her lip, hand still on his shoulder though for all the response it got from her Alex, it may as well have been a breath of air, “Do you remember what it was? Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” Alex suddenly came to life, turning to her, his voice a brittle snap like someone had stepped on a dry twig. He caught the way it made Eliza involuntarily flinch, drawing back, lowering his voice, “No, I...honestly, Betsey, I barely even remember it…it’s gone already...” 

Alex wasn’t a person of certainties, not habitually, but he had a few that Eliza took as gospel. Her Alex never left the apartment without having drank his coffee. Her Alex never forgot to kiss her goodbye or hello. Alex never denied their babies anything when they gave him their puppy dog eyes. He never pulled away from her. He never lied to her. 

He’d broken two of those rules in the space of a minute. 

Eliza sat up and flicked the lamp on, filling the room with pale, washed out light. Alex’s shoulders slumped and he hugged his knees, as if he could curl up so small this conversation wouldn’t find him. But he knew that look on his wife’s face, the look when a monster they’d been tracking had upped its body count by one, when their daughter came home from school in tears again because of something another kid had said about her eyes, when he’d been working for far too long without a break and waved her calls to dinner away. She’d had enough. 

Her eyes were so despairingly sad, full of poorly concealed fear as she faced him, the shadows under her eyes and the way that faded grey shirt of his she wore to bed had slipped down one shoulder making her look so vulnerable, like she was already braced for this. 

“Alex, please,” Eliza murmured softly, “I promise, whatever it is, I can help. Whatever was in that dream can’t hurt you out here, I’ll protect you.”

That broke him. Every piece of resolve he’d built up, every part of the wall he’d constructed to protect her from this, from him, every promise he’d made to himself that he’d never tell her, it all fell to dust when she said that and so clearly meant it. 

Because of course that’s what his sweet, brave, trusting Eliza would do. He’d fuck everything up, he’d ruin their lives and she’d offer to protect him. 

When his face crumpled and he began to sob brokenly, she was there in an instant, pulling him against her chest, her arms locking sure and safe around his trembling shoulders like harbour walls trying to keep the raging storm beyond them at bay but the storm was here, it was in him, she’d only ended up trapping herself along with him. He knew he should push her away, he should try and wrench free and do it soon before he hurt her worse than he was already going to. But some stronger part of Alex rationalised that he had been a selfish wretch all his life and habits were hard to break. He only hated himself worse as he held her back, buried his face against her sleep softened skin, grasped at every kind and soothing word she gave him, every promise, knowing how precious they were now. How few he had left to cling to. 

“You can’t,” he eventually choked out, when his conscience overtook his desperation, though the bitter taste in his mouth refused to shift, “You can’t protect me from this…”

Eliza frowned, not sure she’d heard him right, what he said made no sense...

“Alex, it’s okay,” she repeated, pulling back and cupping his face with one hand, “It was only a dream…”

“No,” he murmured, more tears welling up in his eyes to chase those that had already fallen, “It...Eliza…”

The look in Eliza’s eyes shifted so it was no longer just her seeking to comfort him, she was looking for a little comfort herself, “What are you talking about, baby? You were only dreaming, right?” 

Her husband’s jaw worked up and down, like he was hoping the words would just present themselves if he made the right motions but nothing appeared on his tongue and the tears just kept flowing until rivers of reflected moonlight ran down his hollow cheeks. 

Eliza had relied on her instinct a lot in the past, it was a skill all hunters learned and learned fast. And right now there was a sickening throbbing in the back of her throat, a dizzying sense that had been building for weeks now but she only noticed now it was huge and pacing and snarling threateningly. The sense that something was very, very wrong. 

“Alex, what’s happened?” the sleep had dissipated from her voice, her eyes were alert and wary, searching the shadows, trying to brace for what was coming if she could only see it’s shape, “What have you done?”

She wasn’t entirely sure what made her phrase it quite like that but the instant she said it and saw Alex flinch noticeably, her heart dropped so fast she couldn’t be sure it had ever been there in the first place. 

“Alex…”

“Eliza,” he rasped, tense and frightened and so desperately sad,  “I...please, you have to understand, it was all for you and for our son, I never...I’m sorry…”

Already making excuses, already scrambling away from the guilt he deserved. Alex closed his eyes, feeling a familiar but no less wrenching stab of self hatred. No more of that. He owed Eliza so, so much more than that.

“I made a deal with the crossroads demon,” the words came in a flat, miserable tide, breaking free of where he’d been keeping them locked and chained for almost ten years. Their sour, bitter taste wasn’t welcome on his tongue. “I traded my soul to Burr, to the king of the crossroads and my time is almost up. Ten years he gave me and it’s almost gone. I’m sorry.” 

He braced himself, he held himself tightly, watching Eliza’s expression as much as he wanted to look away and hide but he wasn’t going to turn his eyes away from his wife, not now, not ever. But her face stayed still, expressionless, her eyes dark like the light that was always in them had retreated, a familiar shore to Alex but it’s lighthouse had dimmed and now he was lost. Her mouth was slack and downturned but no words came out of them, for long enough that Alex began to wonder if she’d heard him at all, if this was just another guilt poisoned dream and soon everything would fall away into dust and he’d be left with the faint faraway crackling of fire that somehow sounded like it was calling his name, that eerie, knowing smile of Burr’s, the dark pits of his eyes, the way his lips on Alex’s had tasted of soil and steel, of Alex’s own grave and the cold metal that would send him there. 

But then Eliza spoke, in a voice that broke what was left whole of Alex’s heart. 

“Baby, that isn’t funny,” she murmured, drawing back, away from him, “Stop it.” 

Alex’s heart jumped painfully, “Eliza, I...I’m sorry, it’s true…” 

“No,” Eliza cut across him with a desperate sharpness, like she thought if he said no more they could forget it had ever happened, “Alex, no, you wouldn’t do that. You and me, we’ve seen too much, we know too much for you to do something so...so...you know better than to do that, much less keep it from me…” 

His words came out as a sob, “Betsey, I had no choice…” 

That name, the name he would always call her when he was at his sweetest, when the love they had for each other felt so deep and strong it could barely be carried, that jarred so horribly in that moment that Eliza couldn’t stand it.

“Alex, no!” Some part of her brain knew that she should be keeping her voice down, the house was full of sleeping children but the words couldn’t be taken back now, “Alex, you wouldn’t, please, there’s nothing you would do...what...I mean, what on earth would you give for...what would make you leave our family, leave _ me _ …” 

And then, when Alex’s eyes cast down and his lower lip began to tremble and Eliza felt cold fingers trickle down her spine with a concrete certainty as the walls closed in around her and all the oxygen left the room, she remembered.

_ They’re not crying. They’re supposed to cry, babies are supposed to cry… _

That thought had drifted through her mind, the only thing in the silence after it was over, that horrible, heavy silence made even worse by the absence of that shrill, confused hello Eliza was searching desperately for. But she’d been so tired, in so much pain, and yet she’d had to accept it, as much as she’d wanted to think it was a trick her mind was playing, a cruel and horrific trick. There was no crying. There was nothing. All the hopes she’d had, all the love she’d held, all the dreams she’d build on their tiny shoulders faded into nothing.

So she’d faded too. 

 

Eliza had felt it. She’d known she had and yet she was still here and Philip was still here, those dreams had been won back somehow, bought back with some price. But Eliza hadn’t want to think about it so she’d hidden the realisation even from herself, never wanting to know that it had even been paid.

But now she knew, the truth was there in his eyes and her own head, where it had always been if she’d just been brave enough to see it. Her husband had bought her life and her precious first born son’s, in fact, all of their children that had come after Philip, every single one of them. And all at the cost of his own. 

What the fuck was she supposed to do with  _ that? _

In the silence that hung and thickened the air, like the rain that soaked you to the bone before you were even aware of it, Alex recklessly reached out for her, “Betsey…”

She jerked her hand away and out of his reach, in a gesture that wounded them both so deeply their breath caught hard like a rock and they both became dizzy. Eliza scrambled back off the bed, staggering on sleep and shock weakened legs, catching herself on the wall. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him dart forward to help but she held a hand up to stop him. 

“Alex,” she whispered in a thin, strained voice, “Please understand that I can’t look at you right now. Just...please.”

He’d known it would be coming but it didn’t make it hurt any less, imagining what she might say in his head was a far, far cry from actually hearing the dull blade of anger in her voice, along with seeing how she turned her back to him, shoulders tense and thrumming with fury and fear and god only knew what else, under the old shirt of his she wore to bed. 

“I...I couldn’t watch you die,” he murmured, voice shaking, “Betsey, I couldn’t lose you and Pip, not after everything we’d been through...all the promises I made to you…to keep you safe, keep you happy…”

“Don’t,” Eliza slammed the word down hard like a castle gate, barring his way, “Don’t talk about my  _ happiness _ . Don’t...don’t act like this should be what I want.”

“I know,” Alex hadn’t even realised he’d started to cry until he felt the tear land on his tightly crossed hands in his lap, “I know it was selfish and stupid of me, I wasn’t thinking and I’m so, so sorry I hurt you but...Eliza, I’m not sorry for making the choice I made. I’d do it again, even now.” 

Eliza stared at the wallpaper until her vision blurred and the patterns melted into a broken slag of what used to be familiar, like she was already watching her life fall apart but she was determined not to look at him. With his words, she was forced to think of what Alex had bought with his soul. The life they had together, better than anything she’d ever dreamed might be real for her, the kind of thing she’d given up on and let slide through her fingers a long time ago but it had made a hollow place in her heart. Every one of their beautiful babies, their sunflower Philip, their sweet, soulful little bird Angie, their hurricane AJ, their gentle littlest one, Jamie, who couldn’t bear to be without cuddles for more than five minutes. Every single one of them must have been another reminder to Alex of the years and years he’d written away and yet he made them with her anyway, just for the sweetness of what few years he must have known he had. 

And even beyond the obvious and the grand, all the little things he’d given her too, more than she could count. Every careful brush of her hair back from her eyes, every kiss on the cheek as she’d stood at the kitchen counter, every time he brought her to orgasm so hard she’d seen stars, every time he’d called her beautiful and so obviously meant it with all his heart, every night he’d rested his head against her swollen belly because it reminded him of the ocean back at home. So many things she relied on and clung to, having lived her life without them before and having no desire to do it again. The smell of coffee in the morning, the feel of his hair running through her fingers, his own scarred, calloused hands on her thighs, hands she knew were capable of breaking and burning and spilling blood but they’d also held her close while she cried, cupped her face as he’d kissed her passionately, been the first thing her babies felt as they came into the world, built this beautiful life they’d been living in spite of everything that told them they couldn’t. 

But what was all of that worth to her? Worth losing the man she loved, worth his life? And not just that, Eliza knew these deals and trades, it went much beyond death. Having your soul taken meant the pit, it meant the rest of eternity spent being the plaything of every demon in existence. Eliza’s stomach roiled at the thought of all the beasts and monsters down there who must have been cursing their names for years after everything they’d done together and apart, the things they’d do to her Alex...what it would make of him…

Eliza knew bad dreams, she’d been unwilling companions with them since she lost her parents. But not a single one in all those years even came close to what she saw in front of her eyes in that moment. A familiar setting, ducking, dodging, rolling, striking as soon as the opportunity presented itself with precise, deadly movements. A silver knife at an exposed throat and a face bared in fury and hatred. 

Alex’s face with cold, staring black eyes. Her blade, his black blood running down her wrist. 

No. No, that couldn’t happen, it just couldn’t, how was that even fair? 

Eliza turned back to Alex, that horrible vision making the anger rear inside her again, turning her brown eyes to hard stone, her voice to a dry, broken crack of thunder, “What exactly was your plan here, Alex? Were you just going to run out on me and our children? Or were you just going to let the hellhounds come find you here and we’d come home from the fucking school run and find your mangled corpse in the living room? For fuck’s sake, Alex, on Philip’s  _ birthday!” _

Alex gave a strangled sob, pulling back like she’d struck him. In the midst of it all, somehow that thought had never occurred to him or, at least, he hadn’t allowed it to. That the day he’d be taken, the day he’d lose everything and leave his family with a ragged edged hole in their lives would be his eldest son’s tenth birthday. 

“I didn’t think…” he stammered, his hands apparently taking on frantic, panicked minds of their own, crawling all over him until they began to tug at his hair in anguish, “I didn’t...I was going t-to leave a note, s-say I went hunting and just...just…”

“Die,” Eliza spat out the word her husband couldn’t bring himself to say, “Go off into the woods and die and leave us wondering what the hell happened to you for the rest of our lives. Great fucking plan, Alex.”

Alex’s face twisted in pain, his shoulders tightening, his fingers grasping harder in a grotesque parody of the soothing, gentling motions Eliza would make in times that seemed a thousand years ago right now, where she’d pet his hair to bring him back from his anxieties, “I wasn’t thinking! Eliza, all I knew was I couldn’t let you and Philip die because of me, I was happy to give my life for you and I’d do it again! For god’s sake, ten years seemed like a lifetime, I’d have given it all for ten more  _ seconds  _ with you that night!” 

“But we were supposed to have more than ten years, Alex!” the tears began to flow then, turning her voice into a heartbreaking wrench, “We were supposed to have decades to be together, to watch our kids grow up and make more and keep them safe and never, ever have to be alone again. You promised me, Alex, you promised me I’d never have to be without you and now look what you’ve done!” 

“I know,” Alex shouted, unable to hear any more of the life he was owed but had given away, hurting so much worse than the tearing threatening the roots of his hair as he pulled harder completely unconsciously, nails raking his scalp hard enough to draw blood, “I know that, Eliza, please...I...you’ll be okay, I know you will, you have the kids and you have your sisters. You were all I ever had...I just couldn’t live without you but I knew you’d be fine without me, you’ve never needed me the way I need you.” 

“ _ Don’t say that!” _

Eliza threw herself across the room, gripping Alex’s wrists with white knuckles as she dragged them away from his skin before he could hurt himself anymore.  

There was a brief silence then, as thin and brittle and delicate as the film of frost that clung to leaves, trembling under it’s own existence. Their panting couldn’t be distinguished, nor could the hammering of their hearts and the soft noise that wasn’t even really a noise at all, just a whisper, of their tears running down their faces and landing on the comforter. 

Eliza was the one with the bravery to break it, “Alexander. Don’t ever, ever say that. Please don’t ever think that I don’t care about you as much as you care about me, that it wouldn’t utterly break me to lose you. That you’re worth less than me.”

Alex looked at her like he genuinely couldn’t understand what she was saying, like she was telling him the sky was purple and down was up and nothing he’d known so far had been real, “I...I don’t...oh god, Betsey, I’m sorry…”

This time, the nickname didn’t make the anger in her chest flare, it doused it until there was nothing left but sad, sodden ash. The fury was gone, she had to understand why he’d done what he did, there was no way around it. He was the reason she was still alive and more importantly, the reason her children, her daughter and her sons even existed. 

What would she have done if it was her standing there in the dark with two roads to her right and left diverging into God knew what?

The anger could die, to come back later or fester into something else or gutter out completely, Eliza had no idea and didn’t care right now but there was no escaping the sadness. Because all she could think was how sometime soon, in a matter of weeks, she’d have to hear him say that, that name she’d relied on so much since the day she met Alex, and she’d have to know it would be the last. 

How was she supposed to bear that? 

And, almost as soon as the question appeared in her mind, there was the answer. 

She couldn’t, she knew that for a certainty, she couldn’t live without Alex. And so, she wouldn’t.

“We’ll fix this, Alex,” Eliza murmured, somehow making her voice sure and solid, drawing on this simple logical trick she was now pinning her entire future, the life of her children’s father, the life of her soulmate upon, “I’ll find a way to get you out of this contract.”

Alex blinked rapidly, like he thought clearing the tears from his eyes would force this to make more sense, “But...you can’t? Eliza, this is Burr. This is the freaking king of the crossroads…”

She shook her head, shaking away his words like inconvenient rainfall, “We’ll find one. There will be a way out, you just have to find it, just got to look...”

“No,” Alex was the one who drew back now. Not that she could blame him, of course he’d had a decade to resign himself to this, any hope now was just poison. He pushed his hand across his face to clear away the stinging salt of sweat and tears, somehow looking ten years older when his hand passed than before. He looked like he’d been punched in the face, his eyes dark with shadow, his cheeks hollow and wan. 

He looked like a man who’d given up already and Eliza couldn’t have that. 

“Alexander Hamilton,” she breathed, “There is no way in heaven, earth or hell you are leaving me without a fight.”

His mouth twisted, “Baby, since that goddamn day I’ve been trying to think of a way around this and there just isn’t one. There’s no trick, there’s no out, I signed that fucking contract with my own mouth and my own blood. Demons like him don’t deal in  _ loopholes.” _

Eliza frowned, “Then we make him drop the contract himself. If he does it, there’s no problem.” 

“He isn’t going to do that!” Alex groaned exasperatedly, his eyes flat. Eliza despised this, she hated seeing her Alex, her staunch, strong hunting partner who would always be the one to slide her another box of bullets and tell her that nothing was over until it was over, look at her and see no way out for himself. 

“I’m going to make him,” Eliza said fiercely, all the years they’d been out of the game suddenly falling away and she was suddenly the woman who’d seen her parents die in front of her, who jumped from motel to motel across the country to deliberately hunt down the things other people ran from, who could pin a fly to the wall with her throwing knife from fifty paces, who had made a promise that no kid would have to go through what she went through, no matter how many heads had to roll to make it happen. 

Alex hadn’t looked so terrified all night.

“You can’t,” he rasped, eyes wide, “Please, Eliza no. This isn’t your fight. I’m the one who made this choice and I face the consequences. No way in hell I’m putting you on Burr’s radar.” 

“I was a Schuyler and now I’m a Hamilton,” Eliza growled tiredly, “If I’m not on this guy’s radar by now then he’s been living under a rock.” 

“Absolutely not,” Alex returned, sharper than he meant to, “You’re not getting yourself killed looking for hope that just isn’t there.” 

“But you’ll kill yourself for us?”

“It’s not the same, there was hope then.”

“Alex, I can’t live without you.”

“You don’t mean that, you need to think about the kids-”

“How can _ you _ say that?”

Their voices had been climbing without either of them realising, lost in their own storm until reality found it’s way through the cracks. The familiar tinny sound of the baby monitor flaring into life made them both jump, both come crashing back down to the realisation that they now had to make this horrible realisation fit into their previously treasured normal lives. Somehow it was worse than the immediacy of hearing it, having to hold it all at once. Alex still had a countdown over his head, Eliza still had frantic half scraps of plans fluttering around her like chips of burnt paper on the wind but the monitor kept shrieking shrilly. 

“I’ll get him,” Alex sighed, sounding exhausted as he staggered from the bed, but there was an unmistakable note of relief in the out he was being given by his youngest son. 

Eliza heard the click of the door behind him, heard his footsteps and then the cries stopped soon after. All it ever took to calm their dear little cuddlebug, their little Jamie, was the sight of one of his parent’s faces. Now she was alone, the instinct to fall on one side, curl into as tight a ball as she could possibly make and sob her heart out was so strong it took everything she had not to give in to it. But she couldn’t do that, not now, she had a lot of work to do in a very short space of time. 

She remembered a lot of other times like this, when she was a younger woman, a huntress, and yet somehow had less cares than the orphanage social worker mother she was now. When the war they seemed to always be fighting got too much, when they’d arrived too late to save someone and it all felt so pointless, when she’d look in the mirror and see a new scar she’d picked up and suddenly want to fall apart. Those times always seemed to come more frequently for Eliza than they had for either of her sisters, she’d always worried that it made her the weakest of the three of them, the one that wasn’t cut out for it, the one who was dragging them down. But Angelica would take her to wherever the closest pie shop was, even if it meant a three hour drive, four trains, three buses, buy her a slice of apple and raspberry, take her hands across the formica table and tell her that it wasn’t the fact that she kept stumbling. It was the fact that she always let herself be picked up again. It was that Eliza would always keep giving, even when it cost her so much. 

_ Just one more step _ , Angelica would say, her eyes warm and certain, her face sure,  _ one more step is all you have to take and we’ll go from there. _

But now Eliza didn’t have her sister to bring her back, Angelica was halfway across the planet. Eliza was going to have to be the one to do it, for her Alex. 

Just one more step. No falling apart. No withering. 

Eliza took a deep breath, getting up and following after Alex. Jamie should have gone back to sleep by now if he was just fussy, maybe he needed feeding… But when she carefully pushed past the nursery door, the paint chipping a little from the amount of times they’d had to take the nicely painted wooden letters off and put another set up there for a new name, she saw that little Jamie was sound asleep. His sweet face was slack and peaceful, lolling against his father’s shoulder. There was no more crying, the only noise was Alex’s voice, gentle and soothing, a little rusty around the edges but achingly beautiful as he sang to his son. Eliza didn’t speak enough spanish to know exactly what the lyrics were but there were tears in her eyes after two seconds of listening to them. She didn’t need to know the exact translation, she knew what they meant to her. Alex’s love for the wonderful children they’d made, for everything they had. Not sadness at the prospect of losing it, not yet but just the love for what it was and the fact that right now in this moment, it existed. 

Weeping silently, Eliza came up as Alex reached the end of his song and laid Jamie down in the crib, wrapping her arms around his waist. 

“I really am sorry, Eliza,” he whispered, after a moment. 

“I know,” she murmured back, “I know why you did it.”

“Yeah…can...look, I know I have no right to ask this but can...can you ever forgive me?”

She paused a moment before she answered, “Alex, I can’t be mad at you for saving our son’s life. But I don’t forgive you keeping it from me, not yet.”

It was more than Alex thought he deserved, he would take it gladly, grasping her hand when he just couldn’t find the words to thank her. 

Neither of them wanted to be anywhere but right there, by their sleeping son, watching his dreams play out across his face. 

“You’re right,” Alex sighed, the words surprising even him, “I can’t leave them without at least trying. I owe them so much more than that.”

Eliza couldn’t say anything, she was the one who was left without words. She just hugged him tighter, burying her face against his back, letting her arms and her tears and her shaking, shuddering sigh of relief speak for themselves. That was all the thanks she needed, knowing her Alex was ready to fight by her side. Even if it came to nothing, even if the worst did happen, at least they’d have tried. 

It was just an inevitability, both of them carried away in the tide, their instincts acting for them and making the decisions their minds couldn’t. As soon as their bedroom door shut behind them again, their lips crashed together, their hands went grasping, clothes were gone so fast neither of them were quite sure how. It wasn’t just that it let them push away continuing that discussion for a little longer, it wasn’t just that now they couldn’t say how much time they had left to do this. They just  _ wanted  _ to. They  _ needed  _ to. 

It was so frantic, all grasping and biting and so, so different from what they were used to. His fingers were in her but she pulled away after ten seconds so she could nearly tear his boxers away so she could wrap her lips around his length, he was throwing her down against the mattress so he could throw his leg over her. It was hard and rough and strained and over too quickly, leaving them clinging each other with tears of a wholly different sort running down their faces, ripping onto shoulders until they couldn’t tell whose was whose. 

But still, Eliza was so, so glad they’d done it, she hated having that rift between them, especially if they needed to work together to solve this and save Alex. Save them both, in truth. She was glad they’d done it.

Although the consequences of that one frantic night did complicate things so much more.

 

Two weeks from that night, the Hamilton house was experiencing a rare period of silence. Only Alex and Eliza were left awake, moving around the kitchen on light feet, not talking. They didn’t need to right now. 

Two glasses on the kitchen table, old and chipped and worn, wedding gifts from Washington. Sweet, honey amber whiskey, two fingers worth. This was how so many of their hunts began, it was a philosophy of both of their mentors to start by sharpening the senses, waking up the mind. And in any case, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to die with a fine whiskey on the tongue. 

Eliza sat across from Alex, observing the deepening shadows under his eyes, the way she could see more of his collarbones than she ever liked to. He wasn’t eating, he wasn’t sleeping. Though she had to admit, she’d hardly found time for much of those things herself, not recently. 

Still, he dredged up a smile for her as he tipped his glass towards her, “To coming out of retirement. Hopefully successfully.”

Eliza nodded back, making a sweet, ringing note as the rims of their tumblers knocked together. Alex’s was down his throat within two seconds and then he was off, off to pull the books from their attic, the one’s that had been dusty when they’d locked them away and were likely even dustier now. Eliza waited until he was out of the room before she followed, tipping her alcohol down the sink as she passed. Fortunately, Alex never saw anything. 

Good. That was a conversation for another day. 

They had enough to be dealing with right now.


	3. A Myth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the final chapter, Eliza races to save her husband

 

Eliza had always loved stories. 

It was a memory she would always let her mind drift back to when it was pacing like a restless tiger in the confines of her skull; a wool blanket around her shoulders, playing with the hem of her nightshirt, the low light of the bedside lamp somehow warming her right through to her bones as her father’s low, steady voice filled the room like the rising and falling tides. Those nights were always when she’d feel like she was really part of this family who’d pulled her up out of the darkness that had taken her birth parents and her old home from her, saved her from joining her previously happy life and her confidence that the world made sense as it turned to dust and fell through the cracks. She’d have Angelica on her left and Peggy on her right, in between them so their shadows stood in perfect hight order on the back wall, like there had always been a place for Eliza, a gap for her to slot into, like it had been waiting for her. 

Their father would tell them stories of his own hunts, he’d tell them about the creatures he’d faced and how he’d beaten them, the mistakes and the victories alongside each other. They were no fabricated happy endings and no omitted details, their purpose wasn’t to shield his daughters or put blinkers on them. Each bedtime story was tightly woven with a lesson into a rope made for the young girls to follow, hopefully so if they found themselves in a similar situation, they would know the way out. The sisters working as a team and, later on, Eliza working with Alex, all lost count of the number of times something their father had mentioned in a story had saved someone’s life, usually their own. 

Eliza had tried to do the same for her own children, finally understanding the fear that must have lived in the pit of her father’s stomach every single time he tucked his little girls in for bed, knowing how necessary the information he’d just given them was but at the same time wishing with every bone in his body that it wasn’t. That he could just read them a normal story, something with a nice neat moral and simple happy ending so the sleeping children in front of them could believe that the world waiting for them outside their bedroom door could be handled as easily. 

But Eliza, Alex, Philip Schuyler, every hunter who’d thrown the dice and decided to have children, by choice or by chance, they knew that happy endings had no place in the world. Their kids needed to know what lurked after the final page and the happily ever after, what hid in the shadows that their night light couldn’t penetrate, what it was, where it was and how to kill it. Their lives would always be on the line and all they could do was prepare their precious little ones as best they could, hope that the buildup of experience from generation to generation, like rust growing on the handle of the same sharp blade, would mean their children would be better equipped for their hard, dangerous lives than everyone who’d fallen before them had been.

The first crisp, bitter autumn morning when they’d put a throwing knife in eight year old Philip’s hand and drilled him in how to get it so they would only ever land where he sent them, gradually filling the fence in the back garden with nicks and cuts and scrapes, Alex had left halfway through. Unsurprised, Eliza found him later at the kitchen table, weeping into his hands. She’d thrown her arms around him and let him soak the shoulder of her blouse, gripping him so tight, like this was a problem that would have a solution, telling him everything was okay when they knew it was both a lie. Yet another lie they were having to tell themselves to try and make the life they’d both had chosen for them, Alex by blood and Eliza by pure bad luck, gel with their new roles as parents. It was a frustrating and difficult puzzle, with sharp edges that could cut and bruise and didn’t seem to get any easier with time. 

The stories were a much more subtle and secretive weapon than the knives and the spellcraft they had to teach their children but they held as much value. Information and knowledge were as necessary as anything that rattled around in the trunk of a hunter’s car or were concealed in the numerous tiny secret pockets in their coats that even they lost track of sometimes. That was a fact Alex had very deliberately forgotten that fact when he was a younger man and paid for it bloodily. He wasn’t about to let his children do the same if they ever chose to go hunting, not that he didn’t hope with every bone in his body and pray to half a hundred gods he’d never believed in that they wouldn’t. 

But still the preparations had to be made. The storm might never come but you’d better damn well build a shelter or curse your own laziness when it came to bite you in the ass. 

It didn’t mean Eliza hadn’t liked the stories, they’d meant a lot to her and they were one of the few good parts of her childhood that would never fade under the weight of time and limits of human memory. She hoped her babies liked theirs too. 

Though as Philip’s tenth birthday arrived, Eliza gained more from those stories, those tales told in the dim glow of her bedroom, than she ever hoped she would. 

***

Over and over, Eliza tried to think of a way to tell Alex that, just as his life was running out with every second that went by, another, entirely new life was moving at the same rate but in the opposite direction just under her skin. As her husband’s flame guttered and gasped, wilting down to only embers, a stranger’s spark had caught inside her. Eliza didn’t miss the irony of that, the way it made unexplainable, irrational guilt twist in her gut. It was that exact tightening of her stomach, almost like an irritated nudge from the baby in her womb, that turned her tongue to lead whenever she went to tell him and kept her quiet. 

So she didn’t tell him on the first night, the night she found out herself. When she had to lie to him and say she was just going to grab some milk, banking on him not remembering that there was still half a jug in the fridge. He’d had Jamie on his lap as she’d put her head around the door to tell him so he probably wouldn’t have noticed even if she’d kicked the door off its hinges with all her strength, their youngest commanded all of his attention. That was a common theme recently, he was spending every single minute he could with all of their children, walking up and gently tapping shoulders to quietly offer help with homework, hovering while they brushed their teeth, giving in instantly to every request for bath time or a trip to the park or offer to be Player Two, showering them with bedtime stories and always saying yes to ‘just one more’. It was a treat for their babies and an utter heartbreak to Eliza. 

Alex’s new sense of making the most of every second, his frenzied grasping for what little time he had, even worse now he didn’t have to hide it from Eliza, it was flavouring their nights together too. Every single evening, as soon as the children were in bed, they would crash together, pulling desperately at clothing and not caring if it ripped, not caring what surface was underneath them as long as it was flat and sturdy, moving fast and not caring if it hurt. Every night he had a different way to take her or for her to take him, like he wanted to get one last one of everything in before his timer ran out. Of course, Eliza wanted it just as bad as he did, it was impossible not to give in to the desperation but it was just so wrong for them, it poisoned every touch that before had only held passion and love. It left them aching in the best way, exhausted, satisfied, sated and crying silently into their pillows as soon as the lights went out. 

As Eliza had sat on the edge of the bath, fifteen minutes and one trip to the drugstore and one purchase of milk they didn’t need later, as she stared at the two pink lines until her eyes ached and her vision blurred, she wondered which time had caused this. Which simultaneously heartbreaking and wonderful time had given them this? Eliza found herself with so many emotions at once, so many having to fit inside her brain, that she ended up feeling nothing out of sheer confusion. 

Only a strong, cold resolve that she couldn’t tell Alex that night. She couldn’t put that on his shoulders, it was the only coherent thought in her mind. What was she even supposed to  _ say?  _

She didn’t tell him in the week that followed either, so many moments where she lay in the dim light with her head on his shoulder, both of them panting with half closed eyes, taking stock of the treasured aches and twinges in their muscles. It could have slipped out then, just two words but two words she wasn’t brave enough to say out loud in her own company yet. She couldn’t tell him out of the blue like that, in one of the precious few moments of peace they’d had since his confession. 

She didn’t tell him the time he’d kissed her forehead to wake her, making her smile. She didn’t tell him as they’d walked hand in hand down the path carpeted in autumn leaves, watching as their children swarmed ahead of them like an unruly pack of puppies, leaving their parents behind. She hadn’t told him when they’d bathed together, when she’d rested back against his chest and let him wash her hair. So many missed opportunities, even after Eliza had stood glaring at herself reflected back in the bathroom mirror and forced that stubborn, tight mouth to move, wake up and let the words pass-  _ “I’m pregnant. I’m going to have another baby. I am pregnant.”  _ \- after she’d sobbed for nearly an hour, still stood in front of the mirror, and felt better for it afterwards. She still couldn’t tell him, add something else to the list already plaguing his mind, sitting heavily around his neck like a chain of lead, the list of things he was being robbed of. 

And then, in the end, she didn’t have to. 

***

It was worryingly easy to push her condition to the back of her mind, even something as momentous as another child on the way, it was easy to drown those thoughts with all the work Eliza and Alex now had to do.  

Taking on the most powerful demon they knew of, the bona fide King of the Crossroads, breaking one of his contracts and doing it in three months was a task Eliza almost didn’t blame her husband for assuming was impossible. After three and a half weeks of scouring every book they’d gathered over two long careers of hunting as well as whatever they could find in the local library that might have a useful sentence or two and their most depended on websites, of sleepless nights given over to either research in Alex’s office or fucking in whatever room of the house would serve, of the dawn finding them both dry eyed and yawning and no wiser, they’d learned nothing. 

It was killing Eliza, to watch what pale and shaking hope Alex had kept alive at the start crumble and fade, to see the nights wearing him down and making him feel more wretched than he ever had when he’d kept the secret of what he’d done to himself. He’d stay sullen and quiet, working without rest for much longer than he should, shaking off food and drink and sleep and paying no attention to the clock, until the smallest thing, accidentally knocking over an ice cold, forgotten mug of coffee with his elbow, getting a paper cut, catching the chair with his foot, would send him into a rage. He’d rip papers, hurl books across the room until Eliza ran and caught his wrists in her hands, forcing him to stop. He’d just blink at her like a man waking up from a nightmare and the fire in his eyes would die, leaving them flat and lifeless as he sank back down in his chair and went back to work like he’d never missed a beat. No matter how many times Eliza pleaded with him to pull away, just for a while, come to bed or have some food or...or  _ anything  _ he just wouldn’t cave. Because surely the next book would have something useful, or the one after that, something that would keep him here and let him have his family for one more day.  

Eliza couldn’t help but feel like she’d lost her husband already, ahead of schedule. 

It was the last day of their first month, one of the horrible, grim times when they were even more hyper aware of how time was slipping past them, when they’d now have to think a number lower than they had been recently. Not three months, two. Only two. Just one notch lower but on that day, the difference felt like a chasm.

It was taking it’s toll on Alex, that much was obvious, as he sat across from Eliza, alternating between tugging at his hair and sifting through piles of yellowing aged paper with rusty brown writing on it that gave Eliza a suspicious shiver and wrinkle of the nose, they’d taken it from a particularly vitriolic witch’s den after all. God only knew where or what or who that red ink had come from. They’d had to resort to digging through their much less savory mines of information as their hopes grew hungry and restless. 

Though one stayed untouched, Eliza couldn’t help but notice. It sat at Alex’s elbow, almost like it was edging closer to try and get his attention, like a obedient and faithful but ignored hound. She didn’t need to tilt her head at an awkward angle and read the cover to know what it was; she’d been familiar with that old, ragged, weather worn commonplace book from the first day she’d met Alex. It was his mother Rachel’s journal, pages and pages of wisdom from a lifetime of hunting across two continents and two hemispheres, all in her own hand. It wasn’t just a valuable resource, though Alex and Eliza had proven that it was so many times, it was a family heirloom, a treasure, one of the few happy memories from his childhood, one of the last physical reminders of his beloved mother aside from his tattoo that bore one of her favourite sayings. 

Eliza understood her poor Alex’s hesitance. He didn’t want to open that book he’d treasured and revered and depended on since it had become his only comfort and shield against the rest of the world, he didn’t want to open it and find it as useless as the rest of the texts they’d scoured. Of all the things he was facing losing, Alex didn’t want to add his faith in his mother to the list. He didn’t want to face the likelihood that he’d gone to the point that even his mama couldn’t bring him back from, that he’d drifted beyond her comfort and help. If that was true, it would put a knife through the last of his hope. 

Eliza longed to reach out and comfort him, even if it would do next to no good just like every other night, she wanted to try. But she was dealing with some problems of her own tonight; the physical effects of her pregnancy were making themselves known. Not for the first time in her life, she wanted to put her bronze dagger through the heart of whatever idiot decided to call it ‘morning sickness’, it was eleven at night and it felt like there was a low level storm ravaging her stomach, making her head swim and her belly clench and the words and symbols on the page in front of her squirm and dance around like they were actively making fun of her. 

She bore it grimly for as long as she physically could until she was given no other choice. She jumped to her feet, mumbled something along the lines of ‘excuse me’ though god knows that wasn’t what it sounded like, and fled the room, just about making it to the bathroom down the hall in time. 

It was a process she was very familiar with, she could execute the necessary clean up without her brain really needing to engage, so it was free to stay restlessly circling round her head, following loops of logic that ended in nothing but dead ends. She couldn’t help but feel trapped, like she was scrabbling to scale walls as smooth and unyielding as bone, towering high around her until she couldn’t even see the stars. All Eliza had managed to achieve was making Alex feel worse, no answers, no real help, no further towards saving him. 

She’d promised him. She’d promised him, herself, the baby inside her. That was an awful lot of promises to watch break and shatter in front of your eyes, to try and catch and only end up spilling your own blood in the attempt. 

Eliza swallowed back the tears that threatened, pushing them down to be dealt with at a time that part of her accepted was never really going to come. But the lie in itself was comforting. As she walked back down towards the box room they’d turned into an office for Alex to do his writing in, she found herself gently brushing her fingers against every door she passed, each with one (or two, AJ insisted on sharing a room with his hero of a big brother) of her children behind it, wandering through dreams she prayed were warm and happy and safe. 

What would they do without their Pops? How could Eliza somehow make herself strong enough to stay around for them, to be the parent they deserved all by herself, after half of her soul had been torn away? She searched herself with a fine tooth comb and just couldn’t find enough to prove to herself that she could do that.   

This wasn’t just about saving Alex. The hellhounds were coming for them all, their baying was vibration through her bones too, and their children, even if they didn’t know it for what it was. 

So in a futile attempt to offer what little, shaky and uncertain comfort she could, Eliza brushed each carefully painted door as she trudged back to the office, her stomach swimming either from the pregnancy or her anxiety or a combination of the two. She had a pretty much constant belly ache these days; she’d stopped trying to decipher why. 

She’d been expecting to find Alex hard at work, barely even having noticed that she’d gone. But Eliza started when she walked into the office and his eyes were on her with more animation to them than she’d seen for quite a while, like he’d finally woken up. In the low light, in the strange caste these hours between late night and early morning took, they looked grey. Grey and old and tragically lost. Eliza froze under them, her hand still on the doorknob even after it had clicked shut, suddenly knowing by some mechanism, the way that she and her husband seemed to be able to communicate through glances alone, that she’d been caught out. Not that she’d admit she’d been trying to hide anything from him. Not consciously at least. 

Alex didn’t mince his words, it wasn’t like they had time for that. 

“Eliza…” he rasped, having to stutter and cough and start again when his dust dry throat protested, tears in his eyes for one reason or another but likely all at once, “Eliza are you...are you pregnant?”

She hadn’t let herself plan for this moment, as much as she’d tried to force her thoughts that way. So it was a surprise as much to her as to anyone else when the only response her body had was to burst into tears, it all came rushing up her throat at once in a tide that burned with salt, a release of tension that pounced on her without warning, leaving her slumped against the door and trembling and sobbing. This wasn’t what she wanted, she didn’t want to look weak or sad or scared, she didn’t want Alex to have to deal with that on top of everything else, she didn’t want to have to look in the mirror and see that when she knew she needed to be the exact opposite right now. But there she was, falling apart with just the slightest of nudges, a building she’d told herself until she was blue in the face was made of hard, firm stone but had . 

And there Alex was. In half a heartbeat, there he was, crossing the desk and taking her in his arms, holding her tightly just like he used to, so tight like he was anchoring her to him and him to her. Finally, Eliza had proof that the man she loved wasn’t gone, at least not yet, and it only made her weep all the more. They sank to the floor together, Alex wrapping his body around her’s, letting her be as small and tight and sad as she needed to be, letting her find a dislocated sense of safety in curling up against his chest, as if she could shrink right down in his hands and he could hold her safe in the warm clasp of his palms and nothing would ever find her there. 

 

It took some time before the storm clouds waned and dissipated enough for Alex’s words to reach her and even then she had to sit up and wipe her eyes and mumble for him to say it again. 

“I just said I’m sorry,” he sighed, his thumbs running along the exposed skin under her sleeves, that tiny amount of touch, of skin contact, so simple but only because it held nothing but love and affection, “I’ve been so stupid with the way we’ve been...I should have known this would happen. I’m sorry.”

Eliza was more surprised that anything, trying to wipe away the tears that sprung up to replace the ones already fallen, “It’s not your fault. It’s...it’s a responsibility for both of us. Neither of us have been really keeping an eye on things.” 

Alex didn’t look convinced but he took a deep breath, like he was trying to sweep the cobwebs from the insides of himself, “But this is good. It’s good.” 

She didn’t understand, thinking that the expression on his face wasn’t quite the right one for a man who’d just heard good news, “Alex…” 

“No, it is,” he repeated, seemingly stuck on that one nick in his tracks, “It is because now...now after I go, you’ll have a part of me. You’ll have something to focus on, take your mind off it.”

Eliza’s heart plummeted, falling so far she lost sight of it entirely,  “Baby...no, no….” 

“Eliza, this is the best I can hope for,” Alex went on, his eyes growing more and more distant as his voice firmed up, “Now I can spend the last few months I have in the happiest time, it’s a gift.”

Eliza was seized by an urge to shake him, she’d expected anger or despair, she’d hoped hard for determination, a renewed fierceness, but this was a sickeningly awful surprise, “Alex, we’re not giving up because of this! No way, this is the exact  _ opposite  _ of what I wanted!”

But as Eliza floundered, shock and horror tying her tongue in knots, Alex became more sure and certain, like he wasn’t even hearing her, “Betsey, I can’t ask all this work and stress of you in your condition, I can’t forgive myself for that. I’m not putting you on Burr’s radar, I didn’t like doing it before and now it’s just not happening, I can’t.”

“What?” Eliza snapped, her voice shrill, “Alex, who the fuck said this was your decision?”

“Betsey, see sense,” Alex pleaded, his arms now feeling restrictive, holding her in place, “We’ve gotten nowhere in the past few weeks, all I’ve done by telling you is hurt you. I should never have dragged you into this and now…this has to be a sign. It has to be.”

Eliza wrenched herself away, getting to her feet, her face so hot she wouldn’t be surprised if the tears were turning to steam, “Alexander. Listen to what you’re saying, this isn’t you. You don’t mean this. You can’t leave me with this.”

Alex stayed on his knees and it was then that Eliza saw how thin this sudden façade of decisiveness and certainty was, it was a thin layer of ice over a dark, deep sea. He didn’t even have the strength to stand, for fear it would all crack and fall away.

“Sweetheart, I can be happy. With this…I can leave happy, please, it’s all I want…the times you’ve been pregnant are the happiest times of my life, getting to get at least some small part of it before I say goodbye…”

Anguish flooded Eliza’s voice, “But you deserve more than just a small part! I want more than that, I want you there for all of it, I want you sleeping with your head on my stomach and talking to them, I want you holding my hand while they’re born, I want you to be the one who holds them for the first time, I can’t do all that by myself!”

Alex flinched, the reality of what this was supposed to represent, the happiness ahead of them in an alternate dimension where everything didn’t get so messy and ruined, striking him as hard as it struck her, “I’m sorry…but this is all I have.”

No.

The determination flooded Eliza all at once then. She was seeing now that she couldn’t rely on Alex, he’d resigned himself to the grave a long time ago. Maybe if he’d confessed all the day after he made this deal, she could have kept his hope alive, he could have stayed strong and dug deep for the energy. But she knew her poor, scarred Alex, Eliza knew how he will have seen this. There’d been so much suffering in his relatively short life, so many losses and hurts and goodbyes. This would just be one more, one he probably even felt he deserved. So many times she’d seen it in his eyes and heard it in the words he chose, he saw his life with her as a happiness, a treasure he hadn’t earned, like he’d stolen it from someone else. All of their children were just another debt he’d have to repay, pushing him further into the red, using up his luck and setting him up for a greater and more bone shattering fall when it finally came.

Her Alex had given up.

It was a painful realisation, one that dissipated her anger for now and sent her back into his arms, holding him tight. His hands found her stomach, the slightest of bumps that was forming there and it was so bittersweet there was a metallic taste in the back of both of their mouths.

But Eliza wasn’t going to give up. She hid her face from Alex over his shoulder as she promised herself.

Her husband had been through enough. He thought he’d earned it but she disagreed fiercely.

And if fate wanted him, it was going to have to go through her. 

***

Eliza wasn’t sure why she told that particular story on that particular night. Jamie wanted the one about the witch who could talk to animals and kept an enormous crow as a familiar. Philip wanted the one where Grandpa took down an entire nest of vampires in a night, the ones that had taken over an abandoned carnival in possibly the creepiest and best decision ever made by any monster, until they all met a grisly end as Philip Schuyler stalked their leader through the mirror maze. Their doe eyed eldest always wanted to hear about his namesake’s daring exploits. AJ meanwhile wanted one of the gorier ones, the one that explained the scar that ran up his Pop’s back from shoulder blade to shoulder blade, still the colour of faded paper. Angie wanted one of the funny ones, the time a different witch had taken something Alex said the wrong way in a bar one night and cursed him to spend twenty four hours as a two year old infant. 

But as they’d gathered around Eliza, looking at her with wide, uncomplicatedly happy eyes that reflected the lamplight as if tiny fireflies were caught in them, stars in onyx, she’d told them a different story. One that was a little long and winding, without much of an ending, one that sat just on the side of unbelievable. More of a myth than a story really but it’s what rolled from her tongue. 

Her littlest ones listened with open awe on their faces, cooing softly at the appropriate parts. But when her voice broke from the low, soothing, lilting quality it always took on when she was telling a bedtime story for her children, when she kissed each of them on their foreheads and told them she loved them and wished them the sweetest dreams, after she’d watched fondly and with a little bit of a heavy heart as they trooped upstairs to their respective beds, Eliza noticed Philip hanging around, looking like he wanted to say something. 

“Philip?” she prompted softly, sitting up from where she’d let herself sink into the plush, slightly worn cushions of the sofa. She had nowhere to go tonight, Alex had retreated into himself and pointedly swept all their research materials back to continue falling to pieces and rotting into dust in the attic. Though all of it would outlive Alex himself. 

Eliza didn’t go hunting after it, none of it had been any use anyway, just paths with no end. With every day that passed, she became more and more certain that they were looking in the wrong place entirely, that if she just squinted to the right degree and tilted her head just enough, it would become obvious. The sensation was maddening in itself, the knowing that it was so, so close, if she could just find the right thread to pull. 

But she knew the thread didn’t lie in those old books and journals. And Alex sure as hell wasn’t going to find it in his choice of reading material, just ten minutes ago he’d been sat on the sofa beside her, his head on her shoulder, his nose in the same pregnancy and baby book he read every single time this happened. 

Eliza hadn’t pressed any further since their fight, since the night he found out he was going to be a father for the fifth time over. She understood this now, Alex needed to shut himself down for his own survival, trying to scrape and scrabble after an answer he just couldn’t see would just leave him with bloody fingernails and a migraine. It frustrated her, that he failed to see his own worth so spectacularly, but she understood. 

She shook her head a little, trying to focus on her eldest son. 

“You said…” Pip screwed up his face as he tried to make his tired, sleepy brain find words, “You said that no one has ever found it? The gun in your story, the one that can kill demons?” 

Eliza smiled softly, seriously regretting her choice of story, it felt like her own brain had been mocking her, “Well, most hunters don’t think it’s real. A gun that powerful and useful probably would have turned up by now if it actually existed, right?” 

Philip paused, looking at her with his dark brown eyes and after a moment he murmured, “Not if no one ever went looking for it.” 

He went pounding up the stairs on his overly long, gangly legs, probably thinking it best to get to bed before AJ made a play at stealing his blanket, missing the odd expression that fell on his mother’s face with his words. Missing the way she grew very quiet, her eyes wide, her heart fluttering as a deep and slightly unnerving sensation of realisation settled on her like a sudden, heavy rain. Like something had fallen into place in front of her eyes. 

How would anyone know if no one went looking? 

Eliza went to go and find her address book, the one she hadn’t opened since she and Alex had started their new lives, the ones they’d mistakenly believed would keep them safe from this kind of thing. In there was the number of a witch she’d run into a long time ago, one who was older than any other she’d even come across and had no love for humans or demons, for a multitude of reasons. But she’d saved Maria’s life a long, long time ago and they’d become the oddest of friends, a bridge between each other’s circles. 

If anyone would know...if there was even a rumour…

Eliza couldn’t help but feel like she’d found her thread. 

**

“It might be nothing, I wouldn’t trust the guy as far as I could throw him and it’s like, hearsay to the billionth power. But it’s the surest thing I’ve heard in weeks.” 

Eliza clung to the phone with knuckles turned white with excitement, “God, Maria, I can’t thank you enough…” 

“No need,” her friend’s smooth, richly spiced voice, somehow always sounding like she was singing, answered gladly, “Just promise me you’ll be careful with this, like I said, it’s nothing certain.” 

“It’s enough,” Eliza insisted, feeling like she might cry, her hand on her stomach, “It’s more than enough.” 

And it was. She had an actual name, an address, it was there in her careful hand on the scrap of paper in front of her. And as cautious as she was being, no one knew the underground like her friend Maria. If there was anyone who could find a centuries old gun thought by most to be nothing but legend and exaggeration, it was her. 

This could be it. 

Eliza wasn’t wasting a second, not with a month and one week left. She ignored the clock sternly informing her than she had twenty minutes to get to work, dropping her bag of papers and diaries and normalcy to the floor, diving in her wardrobe, reaching to the back for a much more ragged and worn bag she’d kept packed for years, always just in case but she was dizzyingly glad of it now. There was work of a different sort to be done right now, the participants in her six scheduled meetings would just have to sit tight. 

She paused for just a moment as she left the bedroom, her eyes drifting down to the office at the end of the hall. She could hear her husband’s voice, he must be on the phone to some publisher or editor. Maybe...she could taste the certainty of her path, maybe now she could convince him…

Eliza found herself at the heavy oak door before she’d really made her decision, only knowing for sure that she wanted her hunting partner by her side for this, surely even he could see the hope in this, they’d rolled the dice on way trickier odds and won. 

But before she could nudge the door back and hold her hand out for Alex to take, it sank in what his actual words were. After two seconds, she froze in place, her throat closing up until she genuinely felt like she couldn’t breathe. 

Alex wasn’t on the phone. Or maybe he was, into some kind of recording function, but more likely, he was recording on his laptop, surely he’d want them to see his face. So they didn’t forget what he looked like. 

“And you need to promise me you’ll look after the little ones,” his voice was low and desperately sad, so dangerously close to breaking apart into tears, “They’ll need you Philip, you’re their big brother, you’ll have to show them...but I know you can do it. I couldn’t be prouder of you, mijo, I really couldn’t, with how much you’ve grown and how much you’ve learnt...and I know...I know you’ll only keep getting stronger and braver and better, I...I know it. Philip...please, please don’t hate me. Please understand why I did what I did. It was only because I loved you...loved you so damn much and I just couldn’t lose you. I get it if you’re mad at me but...I just hope you can understand with a little time. I’m not gonna tell the others, I’ll leave that up to you and your mama, they won’t get it…”

Eliza couldn’t hear any more, she staggered away from the door before her sobs grew too fierce for her to keep them silent. She took the stairs two at a time before the compulsion to go into that office and cling to her Alex became too strong for her to deny. She had to do this now and she had to do it alone, that much was clear. 

She shut the door behind her and left her husband to his goodbyes that, if she had anything to do with it, he’d never have to make. 

***

Eliza waited until she was back in her car, walking quickly from the diner without looking back, shutting the door with a firm, precise bang and putting a few good miles and twists and turns and doubles back just for good measure, between her and the figure in the acid stained leather trench coat and wide brimmed hat. The one whose age, gender, expression, even basic features had fallen out of her mind and into the mists of forgotten details as soon as she’d finished her risky glance sideways as they’d taken the stool at the counter two seats away from her own. They’d slid a box not so much wrapped as roughly forced into yellow, faded newspaper and twine, across the Formica between them in a slow, deliberate motion. Then they’d simply gotten up and walked out and suddenly Eliza only had the package and the cold, unnerving gut chill they’d left her with to prove they’d ever been there at all.

Once she managed to shrug away that almost greasy, deeply unpleasant feeling, she brought her car to a juddering halt at the side of the tree lined road and brought the package into her lap, considering it. She plucked at the twine, ran her eyes over it for any sign of curse mark or symbol, any trace of spell. She saw nothing, only the warped, fractured print of fairly mundane news stories so she peeled it back carefully and tossed it to one side. As she did, before she turned her attention fully to the pistol in her palm, Eliza could have sworn that her eyes caught the date at the top of the front page, before it hit the bottom of the foot well and rolled into obscurity under the passenger seat.

She could also have sworn that the date her eyes glimpsed in that split second was a date not three days away from today’s. Three days in the future.

Eliza decided not to confirm that.

The gun didn’t look any different from a normal, handheld pistol, a little old fashioned, pearlescent inlay on the handle. Nor did she feel any particular power or might as she gripped it in her right hand, just cold metal and a slightly rusted, protesting mechanism. But she supposed that was part of the glamour, the disguise. If this thing looked and felt like what it was it would never have stayed secret this long and the ongoing underground war between humans and demons would be a lot less underground and a lot more bloody. It had to look like a pretty junky museum piece or part of a cowboy Halloween costume or the story surrounding it would be fact.

Or maybe it was just a completely ordinary Smith & Wesson. Maybe Eliza and Maria had been taken for utter fools. Maybe myths were just myths and she was about to go into battle with a tinfoil shield.

But that didn’t matter right now, Eliza told herself, checking the safety and sliding the pistol into the holster at her hip. All that really mattered was that Burr believed the gun was the real thing. And if she believed, he would believe.

She debated going home, maybe under the pretext of needing a few more things, a thicker coat, a forgotten talisman, a spare salt shaker. But those things were for bush league hunts, they would never be any good against the King of the Crossroads and she knew it, she just wanted an excuse to see her home, the life she’d been comfortably forgetting herself in for the past nine years, just in case this all went horribly wrong and that became the last time she ever saw it all. But doing that would only make the inevitable leaving all the more of a wrench. And more than enough time had already been wasted for her liking, her husband’s life was now being measured in days.

Eliza took a deep breath and rested her hand on the small swell in her belly, noticeable only to her and Alex, the two people who knew her body best. If she closed her eyes and pictured it with enough clarity in her mind, she could almost really feel a tiny little heartbeat under her fingertips, a rapid one that betrayed anxiety and fear.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, stroking soothingly through the thick wool of her sweater, “You know I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t absolutely have to. But if I can pull this off, you’ll still have a daddy to greet you when you arrive. I have to try, my love.”

It was then she remembered a little ritual she and Alex had always performed before any hunt, words they’d passed between them with foreheads rested together and hands holding tight, their promise each time to return to each other. It brought tears welling up behind her eyelashes to think of it again, to make her mouth let the words pass her dry, cracked lips and knowing the response would only be an empty, hollow silence. Eliza had promised herself, once she’d found her partner in Alex, that she was never going to hunt alone again and yet here she was, more alone and lost than she’d ever felt with any other job, with a price of failure set higher than she’d ever thought possible.

But still, she said the words. There was too much power in these simple little rituals to ignore.

With her hand gently soothing the baby inside her, she closed her eyes and whispered to them in the absence of their father.

“Be careful. Stay alive. I love you.”

She kicked her old car into life and drove off into the gathering dusk to find a crossroads.

***

Alex cursed out loud, his voice cracking in pain as his teeth slipped and he tore his hangnail to halfway down his finger, setting blood beading in the wound like a chastisement. The tears that spilled over his cheeks and down his face as he sucked on it could be explained away by the sudden sting but their reason ran deeper.

She said she was only running out to get groceries. Of course he’d offered to go, for her to stay behind with the children, it was getting dark and she must be tired. But Eliza had shaken her head, kissed his cheek and said that this wasn’t anywhere he’d been before, he wouldn’t be able to find it.

_ Then tell me where _ , he’d begged exasperatedly,  _ show me and I’ll go. _

Eliza had been adamant, promising that she had to be the one to do this one quick, painless job. She’d distracted him with reminders of how Jamie had been wheedling desperately for an extra bath time this week and would of course want his special bath time song from his Pops. He’d opened his mouth to object at least one last time but she’d given him another quick kiss and a promise that she’d be back before he knew it, disappearing swiftly.

Alex had bathed Jamie. He’d sang to him, he’d read to him, fed the other children and read to them too, bundled them all into pyjamas and tucked them safe into bed.

But Eliza still wasn’t back.

So, he was sat on the sofa, bouncing his leg furiously enough to make the coffee table jump, gnawing the skin off his own fingers and out of his mind with worry, eyes fixed on the clock thinking that surely there must be some mistake, that couldn’t be the right time because Eliza had promised that she’d be back  _ soon. _

_ You bastard,  _ Alex couldn’t help but think, not knowing who exactly he was talking to but he saw a number of unwelcome faces appear behind his eyes as he did,  _ three months of happiness, that’s all I asked and what the fuck have you done now? _

Alex gave himself another hangnail on his other thumb as the sound of his phone chiming startled him out of his spiral. He pounced on it, praying desperately and giving a strangled sob of relief when he saw that it was in fact a text from his wife. But the words he read gave him such a twist of horror and shock in his belly that he was tempted to throw his phone across the room and pretend the damn thing had never made a single sound.

_ I’m so sorry. I’ve found a way to end this and I’m going to see it through tonight. Don’t come after me. I’ll text every hour to let you know I’m safe. If the texts stop, take the children and run to Washington. I love you. B xx _

“No,” Alex rasped, knowing it would do no good, again not knowing who he was talking to but the words came ripping out of him anyway, “No, god, no please!”

The phone slipped from his fingers and fell to clatter on the carpet as he dissolved into sobs. That was the worst thing about living with the curse Alex had, the one that eventually took any happiness he managed to scrape out of his life and made him pay dearly for it.

It was never him it hurt, it was never him who paid the debt. It was always the people he loved.

And wasn’t that just a bitch.

***

By the time Eliza found a sufficiently dark and isolated divergence between two dirt roads, the sunset had sloughed away like so much molten wax to leave just the brittle skeleton of stars above her, the barest bones, the most basic components. An old farmhouse slumped off to one side of the crossroads, on its last legs clearly with the door blown wide and its innards exposed to the dry heat, as shrivelled and wasted as anything would be after being abandoned here. Inside was nothing but some fragments of musty hay and a pitchfork head without a handle, looking grisly like a metallic severed hand as it lay there rusting.

Eliza gathered what she needed and sat in the open doorway while she waited, her coat pulled tight around her despite her thick sweater and the parched heat of the night. Demon eyes were keen, the eyes of their monarch even keener but hopefully, if he didn’t know to look for it, he wouldn’t see her secret. If she could keep him distracted, he might not realise. Her unborn baby was leverage she definitely didn’t want to give him.

Still her coat couldn’t make the stars stop feeling to her like pale, staring, accusatory eyes. Knowing what she was doing, knowing what and who she was risking by being here.

And then suddenly, without any fanfare at all, no regal pronouncement, not even a polite cough, two of the stars weren’t stars at all. They really were  _ eyes  _ gazing at Eliza from across the road, set into a smooth and ageless face of dark oak, attached to a trim body that only betrayed a hint of the power that lay within it, regal and proud and confidently airy. Neat, pressed suit in colours so dark it was like they drank what little light there was in the clearing, slurping it up hungrily. But that wasn’t the only thing about him with a sense of greed, that rolled off him in waves, disarming and dislocating. It was in the delicate arch of his eyebrows, his slow, easy gait as he moved almost soundlessly across the road to stop in front of Eliza, in the way his fingers rolled and fidgeted with a single, golden coin he made dance across his knuckles, the only thing about his person that really moved.

But it was the demon’s eyes she noticed first.

Burr got the first word. He seemed to be the kind of creature who always got the first word.

“I must admit,” he drawled in a voice like honey covered steel, “I’m not as surprised to see you as I was to see your husband all those years ago.”

Eliza didn’t rise to meet him, staying crouched where she was, drawing idly in the dust by her boots, hoping it made her look nonchalant, or rather, someone terrified trying to look nonchalant. Better that he think her only purpose here was to grovel and beg for Alex’s life, better to put on an air of wounded pride.

“You knew I’d seek you out?” she asked, letting her eyes flicker up to look at him quickly. It was hard not to let the eye drift towards him, he had an undeniable magnetism.

“Well, only if poor little Alex actually confessed what he’d done,” Burr amended, tilting his head, “Only if your marriage held up which, no offence intended my dear, not many people who’ve encountered your young man believed would happen. Many find him utterly intolerable and abrasive.”

Eliza leapt at the opening, seeing no sense in not making her intentions clear, “Then give him back to me. I’ll talk him off your hands.”

Burr’s chuckle was as deep as the tectonic movements of the earth.

“A witty start, my lady, but nothing more than that,” he replied silkily, “You know fine well that a deal can’t be unmade once it is made.”

“There’s a difference between  _ can’t  _ and  _ won’t,”  _ she insisted, a little icily. The demon’s patter was annoying her.

“A purely semantic one when it comes to me,” he answered as if he hadn’t heard the tension in her voice, “I make deals. I collect on them. I do not break them.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” Eliza murmured.

Burr inclined his head, “Well…demons are not flexible creatures by nature, surely you know that? But of course you had to at least try, for the sake of your husband and the father of your little ones. We’re all greatly touched, I assure you. If you’d like to beg and wail and rend your clothes, just to complete the picture and gain a little closure you understand, please be my guest.”

Eliza’s lip curled in dislike. How Alex hadn’t just taken his creature’s head off within five seconds before he could actually make the deal that cost him his life, she would never understand.

“You’re such an ass, you know that?” she hummed, raising her face to meet his eyes unflinchingly.

The demon king’s façade slipped just a little, revealing a nonplussed expression underneath, for the briefest of seconds. Clearly he’d been expecting a broken, begging window to be that he could perhaps milk a little, fatten his profit margin. This conversation wasn’t going as he’d planned, that much was obvious.

“Mrs Hamilton,” Burr’s voice was crisper now, “Your husband got what he wanted. And now he gets what he deserves. I could lie and say we in the pit will be merciful but it’s transparency would benefit neither of us. Alexander was glad to suffer to buy life for your eldest son and your good self, why deny him this? Not only that, but he bought ten years of a life most hunters can only dream about, picket fence and all. Now comes the levelling of the scales and if he is suddenly having doubts then you and he can curse and rage all you like but, in colloquial terms, he’s fucked.”

Eliza couldn’t help it, she winced at that. Any show of weakness was a failure of hers and there was strike one. The rest had to go quickly before she was out.

She stood and shook out her hair, careful to keep her coat clasped shut in her free hand, taking a step back under the guise of kicking the dust off her shoes, retreating further into the shack with a low, almost imperceptible sniffle that would make it seem to Burr like she was trying to shadow her face so he couldn’t see her tears.

“Please,” she murmured, voice quiet, playing the part very, very easily because of course if it had had the barest chance in hell of working, she would have begged for Alex until she wore out the knees in her tights, “For…for our kids’ sake, please. They weren’t part of your original deal with him, different terms…”

Burr shook his head, the moonlight flashing off the flawless pearls he had for teeth, advancing on her with long, triumphant strides, “I’m afraid not, Mrs Hamilton.”

“I could offer you something else, I could offer you me instead…” her voice faltered, her back hitting the far wall of the shack, sending dust clouds flying.

“What and make poor Alex suffer even more?” Burr laughed cruelly, “My dear, he’d be on his knees with a gun barrel resting on his tongue before the week was out and then he’d be mine in any case. Though of course, that would at least mean you could turn together. Wreak your inevitable havoc as a pair, how romantic, there would be songs written of you…”

“Please…” Eliza’s voice caught, the rest of the words going unsaid,  _ please, just a little more… _

“And then of course, where would be the first place your twisted, broken minds thought to go?” Burr’s footsteps were a regular, gentle tap on the dying floorboards, as regular and menacing as the tick of a clock in an empty room, “Why to your old house of course, to where your now orphaned children sat in tears, waiting for their mommy and daddy to come back to them…well, I suppose they would get their wish…”

The footsteps stopped.

Eliza watched carefully in the gloom as Burr’s expression turned from borderline savagery to dismay to exasperation, “Oh. That was…unprofessional.”

They both looked up at the same time, up to what remained of the farmhouse’s ceiling, upon which was drawn an elaborate and bold demon trap. Eliza never went anywhere without a single piece of white chalk, a habit she hadn’t been able to break even now she wasn’t a hunter any more.

“Got you to monologue,” Eliza grinned, drawing herself back up to her full height, standing on the lip of her trap, eyes cool.

“I’d appreciate it greatly, on the increasingly small chance you make it out of this place alive, that you not mention that little blunder I just made,” Burr said tightly, back to the effable businessman, “I do have a reputation.”

“I won’t,” Eliza drew a dagger from her boot, wicked bronze, toying with it, point resting against the forefinger of her other hand, “In exchange for my husband’s soul.”

There was a flare of anger in Burr’s eyes, the first genuine emotion she’d seen him display all night. It was almost refreshing.

“Oh, come now, be serious!” he snapped, somehow looking a lot less polished than he had a moment ago.

Eliza tried very hard not to look gleeful, though she couldn’t deny that she was enjoying playing with the creature who’d called her husband so much grief over the last decade. But it would be counterproductive.   

Burr passed a hand over his shaved head, as if reassembling his composure, “Look, Eliza, if I may be informal for a moment. I seriously hope you have something more than a demon trap to bargain with, if you mean to go through with this pointless folly. Do you know who you’re dealing with?”

“I do,” Eliza allowed herself a smile, “Which is why I brought something more. The trap was just so you’d hold still.”

She brought the fabled gun from its holster, holding it up so it’s barrel pointed squarely between Burr’s eyes, pulling the hammer down with a click that brokered no argument. The affect it had on the demon king was instantaneous; his eyes turned their customary solid black, his lips pulled back from his teeth, the air around him suddenly flared and warped with tension until it was buzzing.

“Where. Did. You. Get.  _ That?”  _ he hissed.

Well, Eliza thought in bemusement, maybe it was the real thing.

“From a friend,” she answered smoothly, not the slightest tremble in her arm or hesitance in her eyes, “But that’s not the important part. What is important is the fact that there is no way in hell I’m letting you take Alex’s soul. You like deals, Burr, so here’s one to consider. Tear up Alex’s contract or I blow your brains out.”

The growl that bubbled through Burr’s chest was a sound that would have made a less resolved person stagger but Eliza only narrowed her eyes.

“You pathetic human,” the demon snarled, “You have no idea what kind of things you’re messing with! The arrogance of your species never fails to astound and sicken me.”

“Want me to make it a little more interesting for you?” Eliza had hoped but still been doubtful that it wouldn’t come to this, ignoring the bile rising in her throat, “Fine. Release my husband’s soul or I won’t just kill you. I’ll go after your wife and your daughter as well, take them down with you. And with this gun, you know I can.”

Eliza had never seen fear in a demon’s eyes before. There was no triumph in it, not when it came after her threatening his family.

“See how much the people you love can motivate you?” she asked tightly, “Now you know what a mistake you made in thinking you could torture my husband and threaten my children.”

There was a long and dangerous moment of silence between the two of them, the two people who would tear down worlds, burn cities, ravage entire species to keep their family safe. A moment, of all things, of understanding.

Burr straightened up, somehow looking more dangerous when defeated and cornered than he had before, “Fine. Fine, Eliza Hamilton. I will release your husband on the condition that you destroy that foul thing before my eyes and swear never to harm my family again.”

Eliza smiled crookedly, in a way that was very like Alex’s smile.

“We have a deal, Mr Burr.”

***

Alex thought the sight of headlights pulling up in the driveway was a dream.

Even after the texts, the phone call, the explanation that had gone in one of his ears and out of the other that he’d need to hear at least five more times before he fully understood, the yelling and the exasperation and the defensiveness, the sobbing and the repeated declarations of love, even after it all, he didn’t dare believe it was true until he saw his very exhausted but triumphant looking wife clamber out of her car and stagger into his waiting arms.

They collapsed on the wet grass of their front lawn, entangled together, neither one of them noticing or caring that dawn was breaking just to their left. There would be other dawns, there would be other days. Their lives were now no longer marred with a looming expiration date, accompanied by the whispering of sand shifting through an hourglass. They could stay sobbing in each other’s arms for as long as they damn well pleased, ignoring the miracle of a new day completely. The taste of other tomorrows, other dawns that they thought they’d lost, there on the tips of each other’s tongues as they kissed was sweeter than anything.

They now both had things they couldn’t forgive each other for and things they could never thank each other enough for. They had a tenth birthday to plan, a nursery to repaint, a new name to choose for their new arrival. They had years and years ahead of them and so many things to keep them busy. Philip would never really understand why the day after his tenth birthday felt like more of a celebration than his actual birthday, why his Pops kept hugging him so tight he could barely breathe, with gratitude overflowing from his eyes.

The only thing Eliza and Alex wouldn’t have from now on was secrets. They’d had enough of those to last them a lifetime.

**Author's Note:**

> We're on Tumblr, quantum-oddity and minky-for-short, come ask us about our AU!


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